The End of Dollhouse

Major Spoilers

When Dollhouse first aired I was with most people in not liking it. (you can actually read my reactions at the time by clicking the Dollhouse link below). As lots of people noticed, Dushku was not much of an actress -- they guy playing Victor put her to shame later with these amazing impressions of Topher and Reed Diamond. Dushku was just Dushku in a variety of sexy outfits, rather than personalities, which is what was called for. This could have worked in a cheesecake factor, as in Alias for example, but of course Whedon did not want us to mindlessly salivate as Abrams does, because he has important points to make about IDENTITY, and WOMEN, and FREE WILL, and OPPRESSION. Also Echo was hard to latch onto a POV protagonist, since she was almost totally wiped from episode to episode. The show tried to do lots of one-off stories -- also like a lot of Alias -- which did not help, and led to some silly ways to advance the theme: do you see how the dolls are like performers in cages, or women (as generally treated by men), or cult members and so forth? It maybe needed a bigger canvas like LOST. When more meaty continuity and character and personality showed up in the form of Alan Tudyk's Alpha at the end of season 1 (alas, too late) the show got better -- ideas about identity suddenly mattered more. It was not just about slavery and freedom -- there was a kind of post-human element here too, and an apocalyptic one, as we saw in the season one epilogue Epitaph One, brilliantly set in a post apocalyptic future where the seemingly simple Dollhouse tech was taken to its natural endpoint. That really gave the show the context it needed.

I had high hopes when the second season started, but it had too much in common with the start of the first -- goofy one off episodes (a bride! then an unrelated mom!) with vague thematic connections to a main line. Echo was learning but not really fast enough to get attached to her. People kept punching her and she would change personalities and it was all pretty dumb. Like she was a Jukebox. It was off for all of November. When it came back something interesting happened. I started to like it.

Dollhouse and Kings

Dollhouse: "Man on the Street" and "Echoes." The fabled 6th episode of Dollhouse was not perfect but it was certainly a step up in terms of both acting and plotting. Patton Oswalt was great, Whedon brought some fun dialogue (“I’m sure I’m in serious need of some moral spankitude, but guess who’s not qualified to be my rabbi?”), and they finally justified the concept of the Dollhouse -- you really could not just hire someone to act out this fantasy. The mole in the Dollhouse, as well as the idea that there is a larger evil purpose behind the place, rather than just a kind of fancy whorehouse was welcome (though surely should have been set up earlier). I was not wild about the man on the street interviews though it did provide some much needed context to the show -- what does the average person know or think of the dollhouse? And the revelation that the girl across the hall from Helo was an active was kind of handled in a kick-ass way (and was nicely tied into a sub-plot about a handler who was raping his agent), although she was the most obvious person to be an active, and the way the show reveals actives suggests that Whedon really liked the idea of Cylons. The fight scenes were suddenly better but I still find Topher insufferable. Every time he is on screen I understand why it is that some people simply cannot stand Whedon -- this guy surely embodies everything they hate to such a degree that even I, who like Whedon, despise how cutesy quirky he is. "Echoes" was not fantastic but I have to admit that the overall arc of the show is growing on me to the point that I still want to watch (the fact that there are only 6 more episodes this season is helping as well). Everyone getting high was maybe a too cute idea, and not every actor did it so well or was given good stuff to work with. But the scope of the story is bigger now, and the conjunction of Echo's backstory with the story of how the Dollhouse recruited someone else was smart. The virus thing was kind of a silly device -- no one really needed to stop it in the end, since it stopped itself. I wondered if Echo's boyfriend could be Alpha but it did not seem like that actor had the chops for psycho evil powerhouse.

Kings -- the first four episodes. Ratings on this are terrible so it looks like this will not be with us for much longer. I kind of like it though, perhaps only because it has both Ian McShane and Brian Cox in it as well as religious subject matter, which I enjoy seeing pop culture struggle with. The King James Bible is kind of awesome source material, especially when you realize that all the critics who complain the show is little more than a tricked out soap opera have maybe accidentally gone past the show and are now commenting about the bible, which is totally like a tricked out soap opera -- hilariously this means you can't really blame Kings for how pulpy and trashy it is, which is kind of brilliant. The dialogue and acting are uneven -- eveything about the show screams HBO-lite, a situation not helped by the presence of McShane and Cox and the NEED for some Deadwood style dialogue that almost never materializes (though surely bringing in more from the King James Bible is the way to go here or even just a little more acceptance of the fact that everyone should talk even MORE like they are in a comic book). Still the show gets a lot of little things right -- I particularly like the two Shakespearian clowns even though I suspect I shouldn't -- and is kind of interesting. And you have to respect a massive serious thing like this taking the butterfly so seriously as a symbol.

TV This Week: LOST, BSG, 24, Dollhouse

[I usually put this up on Friday afternoons, which is dumb since both Dollhouse and BSG are on Friday nights -- I end up reviewing BSG six days after I watched it, and by the time people read it they have already seen the episode past the one I reviewed. That said, I still have not seen Dollhouse, but I do not like that show (although I will watch the first six).]

LOST 5.7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham. Last week I said Lost finally got its groove back, which is to say I felt the show generally returned to the quality level I thought it should have. This episode was better than that -- this will probably join my list of favorite Lost episodes along with The Constant and the opening of season two, for that scene between Ben and Locke alone, and the opening and closing beats -- "I remember dying" and "that's the man who killed me" -- were spot on. Locke visits everyone and just bluntly tells them they should go back and they refuse -- that is not the most interesting thing in the world but it is not supposed to be. Locke is a believer in destiny, he believes he is the instrument by which the island will get these people back -- and he is right -- but his having no effect only serves to make him feel like he is not special, as Jack tells him. It moves him closer to suicide which is figured as being the natural result of his sense of destiny taken away, but it also the destiny that was foretold for him. It is great how it works on two levels like that. The cold open was also good -- last week I said this would return us to some of the things that made season one great but everything would movie faster, and indeed it does as the new folks have already found a Dharma station. And you have to love Frank for landing that plan on the runway from season 3. That was a nice understated call back to him being an awesome pilot, and the bit in season four when Miles says "where did you crash the helicopter" and Miles says "what do you mean? I landed it safely right over there." It is weird to think that there are as many episodes left in the fifth season of Lost now as there were of BSG total in January. Shorter seasons was an awesome idea.

BSG: Deadlock (4.5.6) AND Someone to Watch Over Me (4.5.7). The miscarriage of Six's baby was one of the dumbest things I have seen on TV in a while -- I do not watch Mexican soap operas but I imagine that they have scenes where the split second the husband wavers in his love for his pregnant wife she looses the baby, because they have literalized the idea that babies need love to survive. Love and procreation for the robots have always been a thing on this show from season one when Helo and whats-her-8 had sex on that planet they got stranded on. And it makes sense because you have to explain why the robots don't just make rape camps or something like that facility that Kara found -- you want the stories to have a human side. But the miscarriage was just painfully literal, and it also felt like -- as with the Chief's baby -- the writers found themselves in a corner and just wanted to get the hell out -- Tigh knocks up Six is a great story beat but they do not actually want to follow up on it in a show where the Cylons and Humans need each other. Not to mention that actual love between Tigh and Six was not very well established -- it just sort of arose suddenly. That said, the interactions between the Final Five Cylon family were awesome, and Ellen's horror at the quasi incest Tigh committed and her manipulation of him and six was amazing and we handled by all the actors. It was especially important because it felt like when Ellen came back she was this super-scientist and not Ellen anymore. But the best part of the episode was dealing with how much Tigh loves Bill, including realizing that Liam is derived from William (Bill) which was something I never noticed before. THe scene between them at the end when Tigh tells him they lost the baby - that is what BSG has always been about -- powerful acting and surprisingly moving scenes. I have not seen love between two older men handled so well since Jed and Leo on West Wing. I have been reading a book that argues that female homosocial relationships are on a continuum with female homosexual relationships but that between men there is this massive break in that continuum. This episode was a counter-example to that thesis I think. Oh, and I said this in my twitter feed but I am saying it again here: Baltar has no character arc, he just plays this unconnected roles at the whims of the writers: Judas, scientist, president, communist dissident, Jesus, Bin Ladin. I do not know who he is at all at this point.

The more recent episode promised to tell us about the secret of Kara and the trial, for treason, of Boomer. I thought the former looked interesting while the second looked dumb but I had that backwards. This show always reminds us that the mythology comes second. The Kara plot seems straightforward -- It is pretty easy to tell that dude is a ghost or whatever from the moment you see him, and it seems like we are heading into something like Kara is the daughter of that deleted artist Cylon (#7) or something. I am glad to see the music coming back, and I should not have expected to see big reveals about her here. The Boomer plot on the other hand was the best kind of film noir -- the snake in the grass woman who worms her way in, convinces this guy who loves her to kill for her and break her out, at which point she has sex with someone else's husband while the wife is forced to watch tied up and bleeding, then steals her baby and leaves while fucking up where they live and in the end the guy confronts the empty illusion that caused him to betray everyone. That was straight up awesome. This show seems a little wonky in these final episodes but that might just be because the show has failed to tell me about a drive toward a final goal -- if I did not know there were only three episodes left I would assume we were very much still in the middle of things, perhaps at the very beginning of the last season. So a lot of my odd feelings will ride on how well they stick the landing.

Dollhouse (1.2) I am sticking with this for six episodes, whatever happens. This episode was better but still not great. Whedon learned from Lost the value of a flashback, and the Alpha material was great and scary. But the second that guy took out his bow I said "He just wants to hunt The Most Dangerous Game of All" and I was totally right. Ironically the thing that bothers me most about the show is that I do not buy Dushku as the dumb doll in the house -- the acting there just seems off, like a kid pretending to be dumb, rather than like a kid, which is what it should be I think.

24. 24 got better this week. It is still dumb, but at least knows where you expect it to go (they loose the only lead to a mole in the building) and go somewhere else -- conspiracy over, Dubaku, genuinely in love with the girl, out of the picture. Of course we have more obvious terrorism coming but you have to admire at least the speed of this episode.